Join This Site

To join this site, ensure you have logged in with your Wikidot Account and click the button below. Enter the password provided in the news files on game into the box on the next page and click the button there, too.

Most often, Sara ends up working a night shift. It isn't that it's her assigned shift, so much as that the sort of crimes that get shunted to the extra normal investigations office are usually the sort that happen at night. Maybe the creepy crawlies can't operate during the daytime. Magic and the like are strange that way.

Today, though, the crime scene she's been called to either sat for most of the day, or actually happened in daylight. The murder took place just behind a synagogue in the area, the body left in…various pieces in the alley. Blood is smeared everywhere, but underneath it, there's the suggestion of some sort of symbols.

"The day I know what these things mean when I look at them, I'm finding another job," Sara says to a uniform as she steps under the tape and away from the scene, back to the cleaner light of day.

Peter Parker is supposed to be piling papers in the done column as he sits at a local coffee shop that stays open for late night students, those who work the night shift, and likeI dunnocrackheads or whatever. He's been here for hours in a futile attempt to grade 153 lab reports that read like the idle thoughts of toddlers. He hopes to high heaven that these kids will learn something more than they did under Mr. Kaufmann first semester. The difference is that Peter is paid nothing and Kaufmann is paid $73,353 per year to ride out the rest of this semester before heading to Vero Beach retirement.

The entire process is souring him on the education field.

But that's not the worst of it. At least not immediately. Peter is surfing the waves of social media. Some would call it stalkinghe would call it intelligence. He'd been stood up by Isla Merriweather last nighta pretty blonde who he attends teaching seminar-classes with and has for the past three years. Last night, mid-slide against a losing battle with a moving van, he'd been ditched for "a family thing."

Said family thing did /not/ explain the pictures of Miss Merriweather being tagged in several pictures at a dance club down in the Lower East Side that apparently came from last night. There was a notation whereby one of her friends asked Merriweather if "u got hiz numba?" and that was enough for Peter. Log out. Log out of the website, the coffee shops connection, the budding relationship—log out of everything.

He slinks his laptop into his back alongside the stack of papers and brings it over his shoulder, dismayed.

As he walks across the street, heading towards the subway, Peter notices the fuzz up to something. He walks casually. He's sure they don't know what he looks like. Well, he's pretty sure anyways. No need to take extra risks as he slinks behind his collar just a bit.

Kara had been flying through the air above New York City, taking a break every now and then to come down below and take a look at the sights; she even had a bag with her to store normal clothes so she could actually sight-see just like a tourist.

Having heard about the historic synagogues and buildings in the district, her artistic curiosity was peaked and she wanted to see more of it up close.

The crime scene however is a grizzly sight even from the air, a sight that causes the young Kryptonian to gag just a little. That was definitely not normal, instead of changing when she sets down onto a near-by building she decides to use her enhanced eyesight to scan the crime scene and the area around it; she has no idea what she's looking for but you never know.

"So much for sight-seeing." Kara mutters to herself.

Unlike Peter, Keith O'Neil has not been striking out in the game of love. Quite the contrary, in fact- February the fourteenth, by pure coincidence, fell squarely on the six month anniversary. What do you give someone on an anniversary like that? For the past week, Keith has been poking around stores, trying to fish around for an idea.

Unfortunately, he's coming up blank all over the place, and that's not good because it's the day.

~What the hell am I going to do?~
~~You could always make a nice dinner-~~
~No, this is more than just dinner, I need something special~
~~You could buy a ring?~~
~That's kind of a serious present, besides I don't think he does the whole 'conventional' thing. It took him, what, three months to say the 'l' word?~
++You could always use whipped cream and- ++

"ENOUGH!"

Several people turn to look at Keith with sheer puzzlement on their face as he, basically, just vocalized in the middle of his own three-way internal argument. Blushing, he looks down at the sidewalk and begins to walk with hurried steps, trying to avoid the looks.

Having a tripartite soul was bad enough- spending time arguing with different aspects of your soul was worse, but the fact that one of those happened to be an ancient fae feline that was the personification of malice and had a tendency to not just derail his train of thought but also tie common sense to the rails and twirl its moustache? That was worse.

++Now you can't get that image out of your head, can you?++
~Go die in a fire~

The discussion dies a little, though, when something in Keith's senses goes -ping-. It's the sensitivity to magic, as his whole being is infused by it… and the call of chaos pushing him in the path of events to come.

In a building just across the street, a very ordinary man opens a case, starting to assemble the rifle inside with efficient, practiced motions. "Yes, she's there," he replies to the voice in his ear. "And the sacrifice was acceptable. Two birds with one sacrifice."

« Excellent, » comes the voice from the other end, clipped and precise. « Proceed. Remember, we are shooting to wound. Our records indicate the artifact can be…particular. »

Back by the yellow tape, Sara's shaking her head at something the uniform says. "No, they obscured some of it, but it's a circle, that much is for sure," the detective says. "Which means there was something they wanted there."

Up above, the sniper checks in through the blinds. "Understood, sir. Target acquired. Strike team in position?"

There are two teams, actually. At each corner of the block, there is a four-man team. One looks like a moving crew, emptying out an apartment. The other looks like they're making deliveries to the bodega on the other corner. If delivery and moving men watched anything other than their work, that is.

*^&#130)( SPIDER SENSE TINGLING *^&#130)(

The hairs on the back of Peter's neck stand on end as if they'd been stuck into a light socket. He peers across the street, and while he cannot make out what is about to happen, all he knows is that it will happen and soon.

Rather than waste another moment, he dips back into an alleyway, looking as though he must be a resident of one of those apartments up on the second story of the brick storefronts. When he's out of view he ducks down behind a garbage dumpster and begins rifling through that bag of his. He opens it quickly to reveal a white lens attached to red cloth.

Kara doesn't spot anything out of the ordinary, aside from the entire crime scene it seems; it's a shame she wasn't as good at Superman as blocking out ambient sounds or she might have heard the teams preparing for something sinister.

Shrugging her shoulders she continues to scan around the area, looking for anything odd. Oh look, there's Vorpal! She would wave but it's unlikely he would see her, hanging out up on top of a building.

The redhead stops for a few seconds before his brain finds the file it was looking for: Detective Pezzini, wielder of the Bladewitch.

(He's never been one to keep tidy mental records, mispellings are bound to happen.)

He starts walking towards the tape, though will make no effor to actually trespass - crime scene, after all, that's why they put tape up- but, once reaching the edge, he will wave and call out- "Detective Pezzini?" he hopes she remembers him without the fur. The 'By the prickling of my thumbs' sensation he is experiencing must be related to something weird, and Detective Pezzini specializes in the weird. Looks like it was Kismet- maybe he could help?

The first shot goes through her knee, dropping the detective toward the pavement before she can even cry out.

*CRACK*

The second shot takes her through the shoulder, and chaos explodes through the crime scene.

Uniforms - all four of them that were left, shout and duck for cover, while the teams at either end of the block step into their vans to come back out with semi-automatic weapons in hand, laying down a round of cover fire to discourage the uniforms.

"She's down, sir. Teams in motion." His part of the job complete, the sniper starts to pack up his gun.

Once the shots begin ringing out in the night, Spider-Man is swinging and desperately towards where the closest shot rang out. He leaps onto one of the brick walls and tries to focus on his senses in an attempt to give chase.

Kara moves towards one of the attacking teams almost immediately after they fire, using her X-Ray vision to identify the area the shooters were in from afar. She leaps off the building, soaring towards the group of armed men, breaking through a window; likely the point they shot from?

Her eyes flash red as lasers shoot forth from her eyes and she begins melting the barrels of the guns, telling the men, "Boys shouldn't play with grownup toys. Someone might get hurt!"

Kara moves towards one of the attacking teams almost immediately after they fire, using her X-Ray vision to identify the area the shooters were in from afar. She leaps off the building, soaring towards the group of armed men and smashing down into the concrete beside their van.?

Her eyes flash red as lasers shoot forth from her eyes and she begins melting the barrels of the guns, telling the men, "Boys shouldn't play with grownup toys. Someone might get hurt!"

There is much to be said for the training Sifu Rand has put the Titans through. Raw talent alone can't make it at the end of the day- training makes thinking on your feet a matter of second nature. Keith isn't there quite yet, but there are some things that are sticking quite well to him- like the instinctive crouch and roll at the shots. His original instinct would have been to move forward and see to Sara- but that would have been futile: he's not a healer, Raven and Rain are the healers. His job first and foremost is to make sure that the threat is neutralized as soon as possible so that he can Rabbit Hole the detective the hell away from here and into the nearest clinic.

He slips the mirror out of his jacket in one fluid motion and brings it up to his eyes. "We're All Mad Here!"

It is Vorpal who stands up now, ready to fight. And then he ducks again when bullets scream near his head. Right, guns.

++May I?…++
~Knock yourself out~

He grins. He liked it when he gave himself full rein. It seemed like SupergirlKarazorelkarazorelkarazoreldamnit was on the scene with one of the two teams. That left the other one- and if his eyes were not fooling him, the red and blue webby tights clinging to the nearby building indicates a certain arachnid might be going after the sniper. That left the other guys. Good, he had the desire to be utterly horrible to whomever was behind this. He was in favor of terrible things happening to terrible people, and especially when he had a hand in enforcing it. And the Fae tended to be particularly cruel with such applications.

His illusion powers kick in and the cheshire appears to stand up, although his real self is invisible on the ground and it is only his illusory self which is standing up and in the path of the bullets.

The bullets which appear to pierce his chest, his arm, his torso, causing blood to flow from him with a scream- but he doesn't go down. No, he remains standing, blood tinting his uniform. Blood-covered purple furred hands reach up to either side of the grin- the grint that has not faded despite the injuriees- and… well, pull. They pull the grin wider and wider, to the point that it almost looks as if Vorpal's head is about to split-

And it does. In fact, all of him splits into two, and out of the severed halves something springs out- small, person-sized at first, but then as it flies towards the firing squad, it becomes almost as large as one of the buildings here.

The Jabberwock. The jaws that bite, the claws that catch- the jaws of the mythical, horrifying monster are open wide as it runs towards the gunmen, and inside those jaws there is a dull orange glow where writhing, agonizing bodies are screaming and reaching out of the jaws, covered in flames that never seem to go out.

~… remind me never to piss you off.~

Okay, the fae were very good at being horrible.

Sara isn't going anywhere, that's for sure. The detective manages to push herself onto her back on the pavement, but remembering to breathe is about all she can manage at the moment. That, and trying to keep the Witchblade from going full force in front of uniforms. That would be bad. Her leg is twisted at an ugly angle, and blood is slowly spreading from beneath her shoulder.

The group Kara's picked - the one that was posing as a moving crew, fires another spray of bullets at the woman, controlled. They know what they're doing. One man tries to keep firing at her, while another grabs a hostage from the sidewalk, holding a gun to the head of a shrieking teenage girl. The other two keep pressing forward toward the downed detective at a jog.

"I see you by the time I count to three, I blow her head off," the hostage-taker informs Kara.

Vorpal's group is no less well-trained, spreading into a V as the cat sends his jabberwock to play. One fires into that maw, while the other three keep pressing forward.

With a snap-pish amidst a flash of red light, the gun that's held towards the hostage's brain is webbed and given a mighty yank. Despite the slight frame, Webhead is able to lift 8 tons or so.

"Johnny, I tried to tell you," Spider-Man reasons. "This is not the way to treat your Valentine. Girls aren't like they used to be. They want to be wined." Spider-Man is swinging and leaping from one building to the next. Leaping away from the wall, webbing towards the wall, always moving. "They want to be /dined/ Johnny."

Kara cries out, "Owwwww! That like, totally stung." As much as she wants to deal with the two thugs there are other priorities. The hostage is the priority and when the web-headed Spider-man saves the girl from the gun to her head, Kara moves forward in a burst of super-speed. The girl is snagged into her arms and she leaps up onto the nearest building to set her down safely, "You may want to run next time you see freaky stuff going down in the street. Kay?"

Kara aka Supergirl prepares to leap off the roof to go back to dealing with the assailants with her temper starting to flare up just a little bit. That jerk had shot at her! It was totally personal.

Well-trained indeed, it was clear that the downed detective was their objective, while the suppression squad tried to deal with the Jabberwock. It was quite a smart move to fire into the Jaws That Bite… well, it would have been, if the Jabberwock had been real. The Rabbit Hole that opens inside the maw and into which the man is sending a rain of bullets, though, is real. So is the Rabbit Hole that opens in the way of the advancing troop- and guess what? The two are connected!

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claws: his name is Vorpal, and he always favors gifts that keep on giving. The invisible feline crawls along the floor towards the downed detective, beccause if Kara and Spidey didn't stop the other group, and his group turned out to be zombies or bullet-proof, he was going to be forced to use his Last Resort, and he preferred not to use it. He always suspected Disney would sue his pants off.

Bullet fly back at Vorpal's group when he opens his rabbit hole, sending them pressing against nearby vehicles for cover. A few of the bullets hit, but apparently the attackers are also wearing kevlar, because none of them go down. "Capes on the scene," one of them reports back to their base. "Still approaching."

Kara and Spidey's group seems to be having a different sort of difficulty. With his hostage gone, 'Johnny' fires at Spiderman instead, while the other three of his group continue to advance, trading fire with the uniforms on scene. "Officer down!" one is reporting back to the precinct. "Officer down!"

Meanwhile, said officer is trying to take a breath, which is made more difficult by the fact that the bullet to her shoulder seems to have nicked a lung. "Cover," she coughs toward Vorpal as he gets closer, the word thick with blood. She coughs, and there's blood in it. "Disguise for healing."

"Missed me, missed me, now you gottaJOHNNY! Tell your boys tha" Spider-Man snorts as he does a little pirouette-style dodge, fires two webs onto the faces of Johnny's buddies, and then unceremoniously smashes their heads together.

"I can't help but get the feeling that your friends don't like me, Johnny. I don't know how hard I've tried and I've tried to fit in with you and your gang, but sometimes you just have to cut your losses and say that it's hopeless. And it's hopeless."

Kara allows the hostage-taker to be dealt with by Spider-man, landing in between the group of assassins and the police officers who are trading fire with them. She catches a bullet fired towards one of the police officers and drops it to the ground even as several other shots hit her with little obvious effect; mosquito bites, "I would ask you boys nicely to stop, but you don't seem like the type to listen… so, let's have some fun!"

Moving towards the group with super-speed she punches the first assassin she reaches hard enough to knock him out, asking the other two, "Whose next?"

"As You Wish" Vorpal answers, and waves a hand over Sara.

And nothing happens. Well, nothing if you don't know how these things work. Now, no matter what she does, Sara Pezzini will look like… Sara Pezzini. Completely useless, unless you happened to be the wielder of a magical artefact that… yeah.

The men seem to be undeterred, "Damnit. I'm going to have to break out the Last Resort…" Vorpal mutters and focuses.

Cars. Parked by the side of the road. This would have to do.

Hands spread to his side and he speaks, "Treguna Mekoides …. Trecorum Satis Dee!"

The explosion of chaos magic could be felt by anyone attuned to such things. Anyone who could see magic would be able to see how the wave spreads outwards from Vorpal and touches the lamp-post, but also several of the pared cars.

The cars come to life, their headlights glowing white hot.

"Let's get dangerous, shall we?…. Fetch!"

The cars, almost as one ma- er vehicle- surge forward, their aim being the rather squishy men with guns.

As to the men on his left…. well, that's Spidey and Kara's territory, his attention is severely stretched as it is.

The two of Johnny's men hit by Spidey's webs go down hard, one simply out, while the other starts to foam at the mouth, body seizing and shaking. Great. Cyanide tabs. Which leaves Johnny and one other from that team, who in turn gets his clock cleaned by Kara, slamming into a car and going down hard. Just Johnny left, and he gives up on fighting, instead starting to sprint toward Sara.

Vorpal's group is in way over their head, but they're an artifact recovery team - this is not the first strange thing they've ever seen. Two go down under the cars, and one dives out of the way to fire at Vorpal.

The last man, though, is sneakier. While everyone else is distracted, he's managed to slip up to Sara, crouching beside her and pressing a gun to her jaw. "Detective Pezzini," he says quietly. "We should go."

If it weren't for the Witchblade, Sara would be in danger of dying right now. Her lung is filling with blood, more blood than she can afford to lose. But as soon as Vorpal offers cover, she stops holding back on the Witchblade. Armor spreads over her, knitting flesh in its path, and she sits up with a gasp as it repairs the worst of the damage. Unfortunately for the goon at her side, the Witchblade is less…reasonable than its bearer. And while Sara's will is weak from healing, it does as it pleases - which is reaching up to rip out the goon's throat.

"We're not interested."

"You can't run from your problems, dude," Spider-Man says as Johnny begins running towards the policewoman. TWHIP THWIP THWIP THWIP! Spidey begins firing dozens of webs towards Johnny's legs, trying to pull him down and stick him where he be! (I'm not sure if that made grammatical sense, but it sounded good in my head.)

With the situation mostly dealt with, Kara offers a wave to Spider-Man, calling out to him, "Nice working with you again, it seems like you've got these guys all tied up!" Kara flies off into the buildings above to keep searching for any other potential threats like dragons or pterodactyls because on Earth you never knew.

The vagaries of chance are aways at work around Vorpal, far more fiercely than for the rest of mortals- that is the lot of being a creature of chaos… shit just happened to you a lot more ofte. Now good, now bad, this time it works to his advantage in an uncommon stroke of luck. As the man shoots at him, Vorpal brings his arm up to shield himself, a glowing vambrace materializing out of thin air- it's not something he has planned ahead of time, but maybe the fact that he idolizes a certain bracelet-clad amazon had something to do with the shape that his subconscious chose for his protection. In this case, it works- the bullet bounces off the vambrace and ricochets off the lamp-post which had been imbued with chaos magic during the release of the chaos wave (but obviously did not uproot itself from the sidewalk.) Perhaps it is because that was still imbued with chaos magic that the bullet ricocheted off a second and improbable time- though there would be no third ricochet, as the next target for it was a soft, fleshy throat. The throat of the man who had fired at him, to be precise.

Vorpal doesn't see this, since the impact of the bullet sends him flat on his back… just in time to see Sara tear the throat off one of the men.

"… er… am I interrupting something?"

Johnny's feet get tugged out from under him by Spidey's attack, sending him diving into the pavement. "Mission has failed," the man reports back. "Cleaning the scene." Only one goon looks to have made it out alive - the second of the head-knocked pair - but not for long. Johnny sights down at him, firing into his head, before crunching a cyanide capsule in one of his teeth. "Hail HYDRA," he hisses.

The bullet that ricochets off Vorpal's construct takes out the last goon, and Sara turns to look toward the Chesire, a glint of flame behind her eyes. Whatever she might have said, though, doesn't come. With the threat gone, the Witchblade turns its attention to healing, and Sara's eyes roll back as she passes out onto the pavement.

"Hey look, over there," one of the chubby police officers points towards Spider-Man. Unable to believe his shock, the jowly face of the young policeman jiggles in surprise. "It's Spider-Man! I think he shot Pezzini!" He begins to "sprint" towards Spider-Man, whose body language implies that he simply cannot believe this.

"Dear heavens," Spidey responds as he reaches up towards the sky and fires his webshooter. A moment later he's up in the sky, pulling away from the scene, irritated as per usual.

"Right…" Vorpal watches as … well, all hell breaks loose, and for some reason everybody assumes Spider-Man was behind the shooting as opposed to, well, the upright purple cat who is totally not suspicious-looking.

Or maybe it was because the Titans were a registered, recognized group, and people were less likely to be paranoid about that?

It made no sense whatsoever. Poor Spider.

"I'm with the Titans," Vorpal says weakly as he stands up, reinforcing his illusion on the detective just in case. You know.

"I'll come by and give my statement in the morning." The Magewitchblade would make sure the detective was okay… so now all that would be left would be hours and hours of paperwork and statements and-

-and he had a date to get to. "In the morning," he says, giving the stink-eye to an officer who clearly thinks he should come now. It is the kind of look that says 'I can pull an anvil out of thin air, I'm not in the mood.' This complication had cost him precious time to find something for the date.

He looks at his phone. Ten minutes to go. Goddamnit.

In the back of his mind, the Cait Side smirks and leaves a wordless suggestion. And Vorpal sighs.

"… I need to get to the grocery store, anyways." He mutters.

"Johnson, get back here!" One of the uniforms calls to the officer chasing after Spider-Man. "You're not catching him, and he didn't have the gun to do this sort of thing." Sara, for her part, is passed out. The Witchblade made its emergency repairs, but she's not entirely healed. She's still going to need a night in the hospital. But at least her cover is intact.